Monday, 12 November 2012

A common thread to many developers who have successfully developed interesting games featuring procedural generation is that they don't consider themselves to be great programmers - Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress and Brian Walker of Brogue* have both said as much (and I definitely fall into the same category).

One of the things I've been waiting in vain for is someone who is a 'great programmer' to also have the vision and drive to deliver on a similar scale project. Infinity, the Quest for Earth has been promising to do so for some time, and I had thought Spore would deliver along those lines - but both projects haven't resulted in what I was expecting to date.

I'm almost of the opinion that a good game designer needs to be a bad programmer. Okay, I don't actually believe that, but there is some logic to it. To actually make games - real games with gameplay that work and are out there being played by people - you have to do some bad programming. You have to take shortcuts, make quick hacks, and stop fiddling with your precious procedural generator. You can't let good code get in the way of good gameplay.

Just today I'd quit my day job to begin working on my on game. Which would feature a lot a procedural generation. AND I consider myself a pretty competent programmer. Not "great" maybe, but definitely good.

Still, Miguel Cepero's work is a hell of a lot more awesome than what I want to create.

As an avid reader of both your blogs, I'm so happy to see others taking notice of Miguel's work. I've followed it for years now, and I have to say it's some of the most exciting work I've seen in "realistic" and usable procedural generation.

Votes of confidence from others like Andrew is an important step for what Miguel is creating -- and the next steps he will take in getting it into production!

If I hadn't seen "Procedural World" before this, I'd be thanking Andrew profusely for pointing me to it -- because it's another fascinating blog to go with Ascii Dreams and the like!!!